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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



jftanuais; of JTattlj anU £)ut£* 

EDITED BY REV. J. S. CANTWELL, D.D. 



A SERIES of short books in exposition of prominent teachings 
of the Universalist Church, and the moral and religious 
obligations of believers. They are prepared by writers selected for 
their ability to present in brief compass an instructive and helpful 
Manual on the subject undertaken. The volumes will be affirmative 
and constructive in statement, avoiding controversy, while specifically 
unfolding doctrines. The series is designed to meet the wants of 
inquirers interested in particular points of the Universalist Faith and 
to help those who are already believers. 

Manuals of Faith and Duty will be issued at intervals of 
three or four months ; uniform in size, style, and price. 

No. I. 
THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 

By Rev. J. Coleman Adams, Chicago. 

No. II. 
JESUS THE CHRIST. 

By Rev. Stephen Crane, D.D., Norwalk, O. 

No. III. 
REVELATION. 

By Rev. I. M. Atwood, D. D., President of the Theological 

School, Canton, N. Y. 

Other volumes and writers will be announced hereafter. Among 

the subjects already selected for treatment are : " Retribution," 

" The Indwelling Christ," "The Birth from Above," "Heaven and 

Hell," etc. 

published by the 

UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE, 

BOSTON, MASS. 
Western Branch : 69 Dearborn Street, Chicago. 



Jteuate of Jfaitt) ana JDutg. 

No. II. 



JESUS THE CHRIST, 



BY 



/ 



REV. STEPHEN CRANE, D.D. 



"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the Living God." 

Matthew xvi. 16. 



zoyjz- 



/ 



BOSTON: 

UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE. 

1888. 






Copyright, 1888, 
Br the Universalist Publishing House. 




John Wilson and Son, Cambridge. 



CONTENTS. 



Section Page 

I. The Title of the Book. — The Greek 

Article 7 

II. Significance of the Word " Christ " . . 9 

III. Explanation of Important Terms ... 15 

IV. The "Logos" or "Word" 19 

V. Opinions concerning Christ 23 

VI. Human Nature 30 

VII. Human Character 41 

VIII. The Nature and Character of Christ . 44 

IX. Christ the Word of God 50 

X. Christ the Image of God 58 

XI. Christ the Eternal Life 61 

XII. Christ the Revelation of God .... 67 

XIII. Christ the Example and Destiny of Man 72 

XIV. Christ the Prophet, Priest, and King . 77 
Conclusion 94 



3tm& Christ, tlje final proof of @oti 
toftfj us anfo for us, — suclj are tfje elemen- 
tal realities upon fofji'cfj our souls sfjoulfc 
rest P?e tofjo stands upon tjjese fortune 
facts m tlje creation ant Ijistorg sljall not 
fie confounded 

Newman Smyth. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 



THE limits of this little book will permit 
no exhaustive discussion of the subject of 
which it treats. Of necessity some things must 
be omitted which it might be desirable and help- 
ful to consider. There is no room for any nega- 
tive work. We can take no space to refute 
doctrines that we do not accept. What we do 
not teach concerning the subject must be largely 
inferred from what we do teach. 

Neither is there any room to set forth the his- 
torical development of the doctrine of Christ. 
However interesting and profitable this might 
be, we have no room for the work. What the 
Church has held concerning Christ, and how the 
doctrine of Christ has formulated itself through 
the ages, must be left untouched. 

The question of the pre-existence of Christ 
must also be passed over. However interesting 



6 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

and important this question may be, the limits 
of this volume will not allow us to enter upon 
its discussion. In fact, our choice here agrees 
very well with the necessity. We have no par- 
ticular desire to discuss this question, for we 
apprehend that the real Christology of the 
New Testament can be unfolded without it. 
What Christ was in this world, in the life of 
humanity, is the thing of transcendent impor- 
tance, and not what He was before He came into 
this world, whether a realized consciousness or 
a Divine idea. This can be ascertained and set 
forth very satisfactorily without any reference 
to His pre-existence. 

Our endeavor, therefore, will be to unfold the 
doctrine of Christ as it appears in His life and 
teachings, and in the record of the Apostles. 
We shall try to go at once to the heart of the 
matter, and grasp the real significance of " The 
Son of God," and " The Son of Man," ascertain- 
ing what He really was in His relation to both 
God and man. By developing a true and posi- 
tive Christology, we hope to set aside that which 
is not true, and give a helpful and saving knowl- 
edge of our Lord and Master. How well we shall 
succeed the following pages must determine. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 7 

I. — The Title op the Book. — The Greek 
Article. 

That we have chosen " Jesus the Christ," for 
our title rather than " Jesus Christ," is little 
more, perhaps, than a matter of taste. We have 
chosen it because we like it better, and not be- 
cause we attach any great significance to the 
article. In our English versions it is some- 
times found before the word " Christ," and some- 
times not. The same is true in the original. 
The Old Version, however, does not always 
translate the article where it is found before 
" Christ " in the Greek, while the New Version, 
we believe, always does. 

It is not always easy to determine the exact 
force of the Greek article. It is used where the 
idiom of our language does not require it. It is 
often used before proper names, though fre- 
quently it is not so used, when the reason of its 
insertion or omission is not easy to discover, 
though probably such a reason exists. About 
all we can see in the New Testament that seems 
like a rule governing its use, when applied to 
Christ, is that when "Christ" is merely a proper 
name, the name of the personal Jesus, or when 



8 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

it is an appellative of Jesus used to make more 
certain who is meant, but really meaning no more 
than " Jesus," the article is not used. When 
it means something additional, the article is 
used. 

Thus in the first verse of Matthew's Gospel, 
where we read, " The book of the generation of 
Jesus Christ," and further on in the same chap- 
ter, where we read, " Now the birth of Jesus 
Christ was on this wise," there is no article be- 
fore " Christ " in the Greek. But when Herod 
asks, " Where Christ should be born," 1 the arti- 
cle is in the Greek, and the New Version trans- 
lates, " Where the Christ should be born." So 
when Peter makes his confession, " Thou art the 
Christ," 2 the article is in the Greek, and both 
Versions translate it. 

That this rule will hold good in all cases, we 
will not affirm; but it seems to give some reliable 
clew to the way in which the article is used. 
When " Christ" means something more than 
the personal Jesus, the article is used, and 
used evidently to indicate or define that some- 
thing more. When the thought in the mind of 
the writer is of a particular designation, — of a 

1 Matthew ii. 4. 2 Ibid. xvi. 16. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 9 

specific Christ, — then he uses the article ; when 
it is not, he does not use it. 

A little attention to the meaning of the names 
applied to the Saviour in our title will bring this 
matter out and show all the significance which 
we desire to claim for the Greek article when 
applied to Christ. " Jesus" is the Greek form 
of the HeJbrew " Joshua," and means u Saviour." 
" Thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall 
save His people from their sins." * It was con- 
ferred upon Him at His presentation in the tem- 
ple, and is His real, proper, personal name. It 
designates Him as an individual, the same as 
Peter or John. 

II. — Significance of the Word " Christ." 

Christos (Christ) is from a Greek root that 
means " to rub on lightly or anoint," and so 
means, primarily, " anointed." It has the same 
signification as the Hebrew " Messiah," and is 
used to translate that word into Greek. It was 
customary to anoint kings and priests with oil 
when they were inducted into office. So "the 
anointed" came to signify one consecrated or 
set apart to some sacred office or work. The 

1 Matthew i. 21. 



10 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

anointed of God meant one specially set apart 
to do the work of God. Hence " Messiah " sig- 
nified one specially consecrated to do the will of 
God, and u Christ" (Christos) had the same 
signification. 

As applied to Jesus, therefore, it means the 
anointed or consecrated one, and points to Him 
as the Hebrew Messiah. To define Him as such, 
the sacred writers frequently, if not always, 
place the article before " Christ." They write 
" the Christ," or " Jesus t he Christ," to indicate 
that they are speaking of a particular Christ, 
of the anointed of God, of " the one that should 
come," — that is, of the expected Messiah. 

u Christ," therefore, means something more 
than the personal Jesus. It signifies His offi- 
cial, rather than His personal character, as 
"president" in our country signifies the office, 
and not the man. Of course, strictly speaking, 
in the last analysis, there is no distinction be- 
tween the office and the man ; the man is the 
office. What the man is, determines what he 
does ; his official acts are but the outflow of his 
being. As Dorner says : " The office and the 
person intertwine in Him ; " * and Mulford : 

1 Systematic Theology, vol. iii. p. 379. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 11 

" His own person was the temple in which God 
would meet man, and man might meet God." l 
Nevertheless, the distinction exists in thought, 
and is helpful to a right understanding of the 
Gospel. 

It is quite evident that this distinction existed 
in the thought of the New Testament writers, at 
least in the beginning, and they indicate it when 
they call Jesus the Christ. By this name they 
designate His official character, and claim that 
He was " The Anointed One" the Hebrew Mes- 
siah; though after a time the person and the 
office became so blended in their thought, it is 
likely, that they used the word " Christ " to sig- 
nify the person as well as the office, and then 
they sometimes dropped the article. 

The distinction between the names " Jesus " and 
" Christ " is well expressed by Archdeacon Far- 
rar. " The Hebrew Messiah," he says, " and the 
Greek Christ were names which represented His 
office as the anointed Prophet, Priest, and King, 
but Jesus was the personal name He bore as one 
who ' emptied Himself of His glory ' to become 
a ' sinless man among men.' " 2 Abating what- 
ever of a Trinitarian sense they may have had 

1 Republic of God, p. 12. 2 Life of Christ, p. 9. 



12 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

in the mind of the writer, these words clearly 
set forth the distinction between the two names 
under consideration. 

Our title, then, sets forth the real subject- 
matter of the book. We are to write of." Jesus 
the Christ ; " not of the earthly life of Jesus, but 
of that in Jesus that constituted Him the Christ, 
the sent of God, the anointed of the Most High. 
In other words, we are to unfold the Christ of 
Christianity, the historical Christ, the Christ 
that is placed before us on the pages of the New 
Testament. 

To us there is no other Christ. We have no 
knowledge of any Christ before or outside of 
Christianity. To speak of the Christ, or " the 
Christos," that existed before Christ, or that 
exists now where Christ is not known, is to us 
to affirm as a fact that which is not a fact. 
It is to talk of the sweetness of the rose with- 
out the rose. Unquestionably there was an 
" ideal Christ," or rather an idea of Christ, 
before the advent of Jesus ; but it was not 
Christ, any more than an idea of a world is a 
world. Without question there is some of the 
truth and love of Christ in other religions ; but 
they are not the Christ, any more than the 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 13 

fragrance of the rose is the rose, or the materials 
of a temple are the temple. The Christ of the 
New Testament is not an ideal, but an ideal real- 
ized. It is God's idea of the Christ absolutely 
lived. Christ is not truth in the abstract, but 
"truth in the concrete;" it is truth realized, 
embodied, and lived. It is the Spirit of God put 
into and filling full an actual life. There is no 
such Christ as this in the other religions ; and to 
dignify so much of the truth and spirit of Christ 
as are found in other religions as " the Christos," 
is to turn men away from the " Sun of Right- 
eousness," and set them to following a rush-light. 

It is not necessary to deny any good there may 
be in other religions in order to bring out the 
glory of Christianity. Still less is it necessary 
to exalt that good into the fulness of Christ in 
order to have that good appreciated. Christian- 
ity has a good that is unique, that is peculiar to 
itself ; and while we may not say that the good 
of other religions is not of the same nature, it is 
not the good of Christianity, any more than the 
sour crab is the luscious greening, or the twilight 
of early morning the brightness of noonday. 

Nothing is likely to be more misleading, there- 
fore, than the teaching that " the Christos " " is 



14 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

something different from and larger in signifi- 
cance than the historic Christ," or " wider 
in its reign than historic Christianity, or older 
than its manifestation in Jesus." 1 There is no 
" Christos " save as the truth and love, spirit and 
purpose of God were realized in Jesus. There 
are truth and love, spirit and purpose, but these 
do not constitute the Christ until they are or- 
ganized into a perfect life, any more than the 
elements of the human body constitute a living 
organism without being organized into life. 
Jesus is the organic truth of God, the Divine 
Life realized. It is this that constituted Him 
" the Christ." Hence outside of Him there is 
no Christ. 

Even if we dignify the good there is in other 
religions as u the Christos," it is not larger or 
"wider in its reign" than the historic Christ, 
unless a part is greater than the whole. " The 
Christos" outside of Christianity is confessedly 
only a fragment of the real Christ. No matter, 
therefore, how wide its reign, it is only the reign 
of a fragment, and not the reign of Christ. 

We dismiss, therefore, all this notion of " the 
Christos" that is something more and larger 

1 Sermon by Dr. H. W. Thomas, on " The Essential Christ." 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 15 

than historic Christianity, without further com- 
ment. It is but the revival of an old idea that 
never had any foundation in reality. The real 
Christ is found nowhere save in Christianity. 
Hence His reign is commensurate with the reign 
of Christianity. He goes where historic Chris- 
tianity goes, for He is in all of His fulness the 
Christianity of which the New Testament is the 
record. Our study then verily is not of any 
imaginary " Christos " that was before, and is 
now, outside of Christianity, but of the Christ 
of the New Testament, — even of " Jesus the 
Christ." 

III. — Explanation of Important Terms. 

We shall have occasion to use some terms in 
this book that it may be well to explain at the 
outset. We shall speak of the nature and of the 
character of Christ. It will be helpful, there- 
fore, to define these terms clearly, and make 
plain the sense in which we use them. 

The nature of anything is what it is by cre- 
ation. It is its inherent powers, those that be- 
long to it as a being, that constitute it what it is. 
The word is from nascor, " to be born." Hence, 
the nature of anything is what it is by birth, by 



16 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

creation. Character is what is wrought into or 
upon anything. The word comes from a Greek 
root, that means "to cut into furrows or en- 
grave." Hence, character is that which is cut 
into or engraved upon the nature. In other 
words, it is that which is produced by the devel- 
opment, cultivation, or training of the nature. 
It is not the nature, but the product of the nature 
under any given environment ; under any speci- 
fied conditions of development and culture. 

For instance, it is the nature of an apple-tree 
to bear apples, not to bear peaches or plums. 
Its inherent powers are such that apples are its 
native product. Its character depends on the 
kind and quantity of the fruit produced. If it 
produces an abundance of good fruit, it is a good 
tree; if a small quantity of poor fruit, it is a 
poor tree. The character of the tree is known 
by the quantity and quality of its fruit ; its na- 
ture by the kind of fruit it bears. If it bears 
apples it is an apple-tree, whatever be the amount 
or quality of its fruit. 

So the nature of man is what man is by cre- 
ation ; his character is what he has become by 
cultivation. His character, therefore, may be 
good or bad, but his nature is ever the same. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 17 

Indeed, to change his nature would be to destroy 
his humanity ; that is, he would cease to be a 
man. This is sufficient, we trust, to make clear 
the meaning of these two words, and show the 
relation of one to the other. Nature is the prod- 
uct of the Creative Energy ; character is the 
product of this nature, under whatsoever circum- 
stances or environment it may be developed. 

It will be helpful also to come to a clear un- 
derstanding of the terms " son" and " child," as 
used in the Scriptures. Christ is frequently 
called the " Son of God," or " Son of man." It 
is important, therefore, to have some definite 
idea of the term " son," as thus used. In Bible 
language the son or child of anything signifies, 
in a general way, a likeness to that thing. It is 
an expression that always conveys the idea of 
likeness, near or remote. It does not always 
signify natural kinship, but it always signifies 
resemblance. One thing is not said to be the 
child or son of another unless there is some re- 
semblance between the two. 

Thus, " children of God" are Godlike chil- 
dren ; " children of the devil " are devilish or 
wicked children ; " sons of thunder" are eloquent 
or powerful speakers, — that is, " thunderous" 

2 



18 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

sons ; " children of light " are spiritually illu- 
minated children ; " children of this world " are 
worldly children ; " children of disobedience " 
are disobedient children ; " children of Abra- 
ham " are like Abraham, full of faith. So in all 
cases. The child or son of anything is one that 
in some respects resembles that thing. Indeed, 
relation always implies resemblance. One thing 
can have no relation to another unless it resem- 
bles that other. 

" The Son of God," therefore, is one who is 
like God. It does not necessarily imply that 
God is his creator, — though this, of course, is 
included when we read that man or Christ is the 
son or child of God, — but it does imply that he 
is like God in some respect, — in what respect 
is to be determined (but the relation given in 
the expression implies that in some respect he is 
like God). 

So " the Son of man " means one who is like 
man, or like a man. It does not necessarily 
mean that he is a man, but it does necessarily 
mean that he is like man in some respects. 
Doubtless the phrase, " the son of man," or " the 
children of men," frequently means man or men ; 
but it does not necessarily mean this. It neces- 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 19 

sarily means a likeness to man or men, but not 
necessarily man or men. If we hold that the 
son of anything is synonymous with that thing, 
then we should have to hold that " sons of thun- 
der " were literally thunder. " The Son of man," 
therefore, does not necessarily mean man or aman, 
but one who is like man in some respect, — in 
what respect must be determined, — but in some 
respect is necessitated by the relation given. 

IV. — The "Logos" or "Word." 

The term " Logos," translated " Word," ought 
also to receive some explanation. There is no 
question as to the literal meaning of this term. 
It literally means " word," " saying," " speech," 
the outward form of the inward thought; and 
sometimes covers both the inward thought and 
outward form or image. Hence it enters into 
composition as the discourse, theory, or doctrine 
of anything. Thus " Christology " is the dis- 
course, theory, or doctrine of Christ. " Theol- 
ogy " is the discourse, theory, or doctrine of Grod. 

Saint John seems to use this term in a special 
or technical sense. Thus he opens his Gospel 
by saying, " In the beginning was the Word, and 
the Word was with God, and the Word was 



20 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

God." 1 And further on he says, "And the 
Word was made flesh and dwelt among us." 2 
What can be the meaning of this term here ? 
Different answers are given. Some maintain 
that by the " Word " is meant God Himself, the 
Self-existent and Eternal One ; and hence that 
this One, the Infinite God, " was made flesh," — 
that is, became the " man Christ Jesus," so that 
Christ is really God in human form, or the " God- 
man." 

Others hold that the word " Logos " does not 
mean " God," but the power, wisdom, reason, or 
creative energy of God ; and hence that this 
power, wisdom, reason, or creative energy of 
God "was made flesh," — that is, became a man, 
and constituted the man u the Christ," the Son 
of God and Saviour of the world. John has in 
mind, it is claimed, the Gnostic heresies of his 
time, and attempts to so state the truth as to re- 
fute those heresies. Among those heresies or 
false doctrines there was one, that the world was 
not made by the Supreme God, but by an inferior 
being called the " Logos." To refute this, John 
asserts that the Logos, or Creative Energy, was 
none other than God Himself ; and that by this 

i John i. 1. 2 Ibid. 14. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 21 

energy, that is, by God Himself, were all things 
made. Then to refute another heresy, — that 
the body of Christ was not real, but only an 
appearance, — he asserts that this Creative En- 
ergy became flesh, entered into and possessed a 
real man, who dwelt among them as such. 

Of these two answers, the latter, we appre- 
hend, comes much nearer the truth than the 
former ; still we think that the real thought of 
the Apostle can be brought out more clearly, if 
we give the term " Word " more of its primary 
and literal signification, and less of the special 
and technical one. 

Now a word is the expression of an idea, the 
outward form of the inward thought. It is an 
effort to objectify the subjective, to photograph 
the inward state. It is therefore a picture ad- 
dressed to the ear, as the image of anything is a 
picture addressed to the eye. If it be a true 
word, if it accurately represent the inward state 
of the speaker, all there is of him goes into it. 
His thought, feeling, will, in a certain sense his 
very personality, his very being, as it were, 
projects itself into the word, so that it becomes a 
perfect picture, a complete representation of all 
he is. 



22 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

Give this meaning to the term " Word/' and 
we get, we apprehend, just the thought that John 
wished to express. It is that Christ is the true 
word of God, representing to us all that God is ; 
revealing the inward state of the Infinite, His 
absolute thought, feeling, will. " The Word was 
made flesh ; " that is, the thought, feeling, and 
will of God so entered into, filled, and empow- 
ered the man Christ Jesus, that He became the 
perfect representative of God. 

We shall have occasion to bring out this 
thought quite fully in these pages. We intro- 
duce it here that we may get before us the mean- 
ing of the term " Word," when applied to Christ. 
It really has its original and primary meaning. 
It really means " Word." Professor Swing hints 
the truth in a recent sermon. " When John de- 
clared Christ to be the Word," he says, " he may 
have meant that He was the summing-up of the 
will of God toward man, the full utterance and 
full eloquence of the sky, . . . the term that 
was in the beginning with God, the picture of 
that supreme thought." 

Prebendary Griffith develops this idea more 
fully : " The meaning of the term has been hit 
by Goethe, when he renders it, ' In the beginning 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 23 

was the Act,' for Word constitutes the passage 
from the inward Devising to the outward Do- 
ing. In human experience our word is the 
middle term between purpose and performance. 
Hence, by a just analogy the Word of God is the 
utterance (that is, outerance) of the will of God, 
and thus the commencement of the work of God, 
translating His invisible subjectivity into visible 
objectivity. The comparison is so natural, that 
we find it in the Vedas : ' The word of Brahm has 
begotten all things ; ' and in the Zend, where 
Honover (the word) is the author of creation. 
And in Persia the Prime Minister, the acting 
representative of the secluded monarch, w^as 
called ' the Word of the King.' " 1 

These quotations enable us to see that the 
term " Word," when applied to Christ, really has 
very much of its original and primary signifi- 
cation. Christ is the utterance of the Divine 
thought, feeling, and will. Other terms that we 
may have occasion to use will require no special 
explanation. 

V. — Opinions Concerning Christ. 
Extreme views prevail concerning Christ. On 
one side is the high Trinitarian view, wdiich iden- 

1 Gospel of the Divine Life, p. 10. 



24 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

tifies Christ with the absolute God. According 
to this view Christ possessed two natures, — one 
human and the other divine, — but so united as 
to form one person, and that person the absolute 
Deity. 

On the other side is the extreme humanitarian 
view. According to this view Christ was a man 
and nothing more. He had no superiority over 
other men, unless He may be regarded as a reli- 
gious genius. As some men have a genius for 
science or art, so Christ had a genius for religion 
and the gospel, so much of it as belongs to Him 
is the product of that genius. He wrought no 
miracles, and possessed no supernatural wisdom 
or power. He was in no special sense " the 
sent " of God, or Saviour of the world. He was 
merely a religious reformer, like Luther or Wes- 
ley, teaching much truth, but some error ; and 
is not to be implicitly followed. He has no 
authority over faith and life, any more than any 
other wise and good man. He is not the Christ, 
the Guide and Saviour, but only one among many 
guides, a saviour among many saviours. 

Such are the extreme views which exist con- 
cerning Christ. One exalts Christ to the very 
supreme God ; the other humbles Him to the 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 25 

rank of mere man ; and between the two the 
Christian world oscillates. Men swing from one 
extreme to the other. If one comes to the con- 
clusion that Christ is not God, he is very likely 
to conclude that He is only a man. If he rejects 
the Trinitarian view, he is quite likely to swing 
over to the humanitarian. On the other hand, if 
he cannot bring himself to believe that Christ is 
a man, and nothing more, he is very likely to 
take the opposite extreme, and affirm His absolute 
Deity. 

The negative style of argument prevails on 
either side. Prove that Christ is not God, and 
we are supposed to have proved that He is a 
man and nothing more. Prove that He is not a 
mere man, and you are supposed to have proved 
that He is God. It does not seem to occur to 
people that between God and man there is a long 
way ; that between the finite and the infinite 
there is a vast distance ; and that Christ may be 
something unique, neither absolutely God nor 
absolutely man, but sui generis, — a being after 
his own order, a "mediator between God and 
man." Surely there is room enough for such a 
being. 

It is well to observe that an extreme seldom 



26 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

or never contains the whole truth. Its vision 
of the truth is usually one-sided and distorted. 
While it contains some truth, it will contain also 
some error; and its opposite will contain some 
truth and some error. Only by some process of 
elimination and combination, therefore, can the 
whole or the essential truth be seen in cases where 
these extreme views prevail. The truth in each 
must be separated from the error, and a higher 
unity be found, in which the truths thus separated, 
or the different sides of the truth thus seen, will 
combine and form the whole or the essential truth. 
In the case of Christ it is very clear that there 
is truth in both of these extreme views. The 
Scriptures present this two-sided view of the 
Saviour. They make it clear that He was a man ; 
that He had a human body, and a human mind, 
or at least a mind that is governed by the same 
laws and acts just as a human mind acts ; that 
He lived and walked and talked among men as a 
man. Of this there can be no question. It is 
the clearest of all facts that Christ was a man, 
and not merely the semblance of a man. What- 
ever more He may have been, He was clearly 
and emphatically a man. He was " the Son of 
man," whatever else He may have been. The 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 27 

likeness between Him and man was so complete 
that He unquestionably belonged to the human 
species. 

On the other hand, the Scriptures make it 
equally clear that He was no ordinary man ; 
that He was something more than empirical 
man ; that He rose far above man as experience 
shows man to us, as man appears on the pages of 
history. No one candidly reading the New Tes- 
tament can fail, it would seem, to be impressed 
with this fact. The being presented therein is 
not a mere man. He is something more than 
that ; there is something Divine about Him. In 
some way He rises above the race to which He 
somehow clearly belongs, and takes a place that 
is unique, that belongs to Him alone. The whole 
trend of the Christian Scriptures runs in this 
direction. The titles given to Him, the way He 
is spoken of, the impression He made upon His 
contemporaries, the works which He did, and the 
way in which He taught, — in fine, the whole 
scope of the record we have of His life and 
character and teachings carries with it the con- 
viction that He was superhuman ; that He pos- 
sessed a Divine element or quality not found in 
empirical man ; that He bore a likeness to God 



28 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

that was peculiar to Himself, shared in as yet by 
no other human being. This the record makes 
very certain. It is just as certain that He was 
something more than mere man as it is that He 
was a man. He was just as certainly " the Son 
of God " as " the Son of man." 

Here, then, we have the two sides of the New 
Testament picture of the Christ. Here are the 
essential truths contained in these extreme 
views. How shall we unite them so as to form 
a consistent whole ? How shall we grasp both 
sides of this picture so as to get before us a per- 
fect likeness of our Master ? This has been the 
question of the ages. This is the problem with 
which the Church has grappled through almost 
its whole history. Wellnigh from the beginning 
until now the Church has essayed to solve this 
problem, to bring into a harmonious whole 
the Divine and human elements in Christ ; to 
show how Christ is, and was, both " the Son of 
man " and " the Son of God." That we shall 
solve this problem to our own or the world's sat- 
isfaction is not to be hoped. Still, an effort in 
this direction is necessary in any work on Chris- 
tology ; and every effort, it may be, brings us a 
little nearer the truth. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 29 

Let us begin, then, by inquiring, Why is this a 
problem ? What makes it a problem ? Why has 
it been found so difficult to unite the human 
and Divine in Christ ? What has so separated 
the human and Divine that to unite them in 
Christ has become such a herculean task ? Evi- 
dently, it is a certain doctrine concerning hu- 
man nature. Certain ideas concerning man have 
caused this to be so great a problem. Man 
has been completely separated from God ; a 
great gulf has been created between the two. 
The child has been utterly divorced from the 
Father. Human nature has been held to be to- 
tally corrupt ; man is totally depraved. Hence 
he is at the opposite pole from God ; they have 
nothing in common ; they are radically unlike, 
absolutely no relation exists between them. 
Hence the problem, to unite them in Christ. 
How can this great gulf be bridged ? How can 
two natures so radically unlike be united in one 
being ? How can a totally depraved nature be 
united to an infinitely holy nature ? How can 
Christ partake, at the same time, of a nature 
wholly corrupt and of one absolutely pure ? 
How can He bring together and unite two things 
that are separated by " the whole diameter of the 



30 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

universe " ? How can He marry the oil and the 
water ? 

This is the problem with which the Church 
has been struggling for ages. To solve this 
problem has been the task of all Christology. 
That it never has been solved is not surprising, 
for the solution is a philosophical impossibility. 
Given the problem as stated, and the solution is 
not in the region of possibility. You may as 
well undertake to square the circle. Given a 
nature in man totally depraved, utterly unlike 
the nature of God, and you can never give them 
a rational union in Christ. • Christ can never 
unite into one harmonious whole such absolute 
opposites. The problem to be solved, therefore, 
must be differently stated. That which makes 
it unsolvable must be examined. Human nature 
must have a rehearing. We must see if human 
nature is so radically different from the Divine ; 
we must see if there is not a close resemblance 
between the two. We proceed to inquire into 
the real nature of man. 

VI. — Human Nature. 

We have seen that the nature of anything is 
what it is by creation. The nature of man 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 31 

therefore is what he is by creation. How then 
was man created ? What was his nature in the 
beginning ? " So God created man in His own 
image, in the image of God created He him." x 
This is an explicit and definite answer to our 
question. Man was created in the image of God ; 
therefore, in nature, man is like God and God is 
like man. The relation between them is one of 
mutual resemblance, — the relation of father and 
child. 

There are two ways in which this truth is 
sought to be set aside or made of no real signifi- 
cance. One is the way of theology ; the other 
the way of philosophy. Theology seeks to set 
aside this truth by affirming that the image of 
God in man was destroyed by sin. It admits 
that man was created in the image of God ; but it 
holds, or has held, that sin destroyed that image. 
Man sinned, and with that sin disappeared his 
original likeness to God. Hence the great diffi- 
culty of seeing in Christ both Divine and human 
nature, since there is no longer any relation be- 
tween them. To remove this difficulty, therefore, 
it must be seen that this relation is not lost ; that 
sin does not destroy the Divine image in man. 

1 Genesis i. 27. 



82 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

That it does not is evidenced by the fact that, 
if it did, man would cease to be man. Confess- 
edly it is this image of God in man that consti- 
tutes his manhood, that makes him man. God 
created the other animals, but He did not create 
them in His own image ; therefore they are not 
man, they are not of the genus homo. He cre- 
ated man in His own image, therefore he is man. 
Hence, if sin has destroyed that image, man has 
ceased to be. The being we call man is not 
man. The wreck and ruin of man he may be, but 
man he is not. 

But further, ceasing to be man he has 
ceased to be accountable to God as man. He 
is no longer under any obligations to love 
and obey God. He has fallen out of the cate- 
gory of accountable beings. Having lost the 
Divine likeness, he is no longer the child of 
God; and ceasing to be a child of God, God 
has ceased to have any claim to his love and 
obedience. As well ask a stick or a stone to 
love and obey God, as to ask man after you 
have taken from him that moral likeness to 
God which gives him the power to love and 
obey. 

Such being the fatal consequences of setting 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 33 

aside this great truth that man by nature is 
in the image of God, theology is modifying its 
doctrine. It hardly holds any longer that sin 
absolutely destroyed the Divine image, but only 
that it perverted, marred, or blackened that 
image. Thus Dorner says that the Scriptures 
" ascribe to the first pair innocence and purity 
indeed, but not moral indefectibility, perfec- 
tion, and holiness." 2 The Divine image in man, 
therefore, not being in a primitive moral per- 
fection or holiness, sin did not destroy that 
image. 

Indeed, the Scriptures make it very certain 
that sin did not and does not destroy the Divine 
image in man ; for long after sin entered the 
world, this image is made the reason and ground 
of the law against taking human life. " Whoso 
sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be 
shed : for in the image of God made He man." 2 
Human life is to be held sacred because man is 
in the image of God. Besides, the fundamental 
doctrine of Christianity is that man is the child 
of God, which he cannot be unless his nature 
is like the Divine nature. So far as theology is 

1 Systematic Theology, vol. ii. p. 78. 

2 Genesis ix. 6. 

3 



34 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

concerned, therefore, it must be conceded that 
man not only was, but is and ever must be, in 
the image of God by nature. 1 

But while theology must concede this, philoso- 
phy, or a certain kind of philosophy, comes in to 
deny it. Very clear it is, that if man is in the 
image of God, God is in the image of man, and 
we have a very sure way of knowing something 
of God. By studying the image of God in man, 
we can know God. The picture may not be per- 
fect, but what it tells us is of the everlasting 
truth. 

The philosophy of " the unknowable," there- 
fore, cannot allow that man is in any sense like 
God or God like man. To teach that doctrine is 
to fall into the great vice of anthropomorphism, 
of making God like man. " The infinite," we are 
told, " is the other than the finite." So we can 
only know the finite, " the conditioned." The 
infinite, " the unconditioned," is beyond the pos- 
sibility of human knowledge. 

Admit that " the infinite is the other than 
the finite," yet the finite must have its ground 
in the infinite. As Mulford says, " We cannot 

1 For a further discussion of this subject, see " Manuals of 
Faith and Duty," No. 1. —Editor. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 35 

deduce . . . the eternal from the temporal, nor the 
infinite from the finite ; and yet the temporal has 
its ground in the eternal, and the finite in the 
infinite." * But if the finite has its ground in 
the infinite, then there must be some likeness be- 
tween them ; for one thing cannot have its ground 
in another without resembling that other. The 
conclusion, therefore, is inevitable that " the 
finite has an internal and active relation to the 
infinite." 2 

Doubtless this doctrine may be used to sup- 
port a degrading anthropomorphism. When it 
is held that the image of God in man is in his 
bodily form and human limitations, a conception 
of Deity may grow out of it that is anything but 
elevating. God, then, will be anthropomorphic 
in a bad sense. He will be like man in his im- 
perfection and finiteness. But it is not in this 
sense that man is like God or God like man. 

It is the spiritual nature of man that is like 
God ; hence there is nothing degrading in this 
thought. It is no degradation of the Divine idea 
to say that God is the infinite pattern of the hu- 
man soul. That soul is the divinest thing; of 



*o 



1 Republic of God, p. 1. 

2 Systematic Theology, vol. i. p. 210. 



36 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

which we have any knowledge. In all nature 
there is nothing so grand, so mysterious, so awe- 
inspiring as the human soul. Place it in any 
condition you please, and there is something 
about it that stirs within us the thought of God. 
It is an image defaced and blackened, if you will, 
but still an image of the Highest. The thought 
of God, therefore, does not go down, but up, 
when we claim that God is like man in his spir- 
itual nature. 

Surely this philosophy of " the unknowable " 
cannot say that in this sense God is not like 
man. It does not pretend to know what God is ; 
how then can it know that He is not like man ? 
How can a philosophy that professes only igno- 
rance of God tell us what God is or is not like ? 
Natural science may not know the relation be- 
tween God and man, but there is a higher science. 
This relation may be unknown and unknowable 
to physics, and yet be known and knowable to 
metaphysics. Philosophy, therefore, no more 
than theology, can impeach the great truth of 
Revelation, that man by nature is in the image 
of God. 

Let us then consider some of the characteris- 
tics of this image of God in man. Of course it 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 37 

will not be thought that man is like God in His 
infinity, omniscience, omnipotence, self-existence, 
or any of the attributes that belong to Him dis- 
tinctively as Deity. Man is finite ; therefore the 
image of God in man is finite. Nevertheless it 
is truthful ; so far as it goes it gives a correct 
impression of the reality. A picture need not 
be as large as the original to be a faithful like- 
ness. Human nature is like the Divine, not in 
degree, but in kind. 

1. Man is like God insomuch as he is spirit 
and not matter. Man is a spirit. He has a 
body, but he is a spirit, a soul. God certainly is 
a spirit ; therefore the relation between God and 
man is a spiritual relation. Man is the spiritual 
child of God ; and God is the Father, not of all 
flesh, but of " the spirits of all flesh." 

2. Man is like God in that he is a conscious 
being. Very likely Nature comes to conscious- 
ness only in man. All below him is unconscious 
life and unthinking force. All the ends for which 
Nature works are known, not to Nature, but to 
God. It is man's high prerogative to know, to 
be conscious of himself, of the world, and of 
God. The two great avenues of knowledge, 
thought and feeling, are open to him. He can 



38 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

think and he can love. By the one he can know 
the world that God hath made, by the other he 
can know God ; and by them both he can know 
himself. 

3. Man is like God in that he is a moral 
being. Morality has its ground in freedom. 
"Without this freedom nothing that we call mo- 
rality could exist. In man God would have a 
moral being like Himself, therefore He gave him 
moral freedom like His own. Within his own 
sphere, therefore, man is just as free as God. 
Man is finite, so his freedom is finite ; but it is a 
finite picture of the infinite perfection. When 
man acts morally, he acts just as God acts, not 
from a force without but from a power within. 

4. Man is like God insomuch as he is a per- 
son. The image of God in man is the image of 
a Divine personality. There is much hesitancy 
about ascribing personality to God. Men are 
willing to admit that there is something — 
power, force, law — in the universe, but they are 
unwilling to ascribe personality to that some- 
thing. They seem to think it belittles God to 
call Him a person. An impersonal Deity, they 
imagine, is something greater and grander than 
a personal Deity. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 39 

To say nothing of the impossibility of there 
being anything that we call God without per- 
sonality, it is evident that to ascribe personality 
to God is not to degrade or belittle the Divine 
idea. Personality is the loftiest thing of which 
we have any knowledge. A flash of intelligence 
and freedom outshines the combined light of all 
the suns in the universe. " There is in person- 
ality the highest that is within the knowledge of 
man. It is the steepest, loftiest summit towards 
which we move in our attainment." * 

Doubtless there is a difficulty in conceiving of 
God as a person, but this difficulty arises from 
mistaking the true ground of personality. We 
think of personality as something cut off and 
defined. Personality is to us the product of 
external limitations. Hence where these lim- 
itations are wanting, as in God, we cannot 
conceive of personality. 

But the truth is that personality has not its 
ground in limitations but in consciousness ; in its 
own intelligence, will, and freedom. I am a per- 
son, not because I am finite, but because I think 
my own thoughts, will my own intenjts ; because 
I am an intelligent, free power, in and of my- 

1 Republic of God, p. 21. 



40 JESUS THE CHKIST. 

self. So God is a person not because He is 
or is not infinite, but because He is a self- 
determining and self-acting power, because He 
is an intelligent, free will, the absolute cause 
of His*own volitions. Such is the personality 
of God, and man is in the image of this Divine 
personality. 

5. Man is like God in his ideal destiny. 
When the idea of God in man is realized it will 
be realized in the Divine likeness. " Man's 
spiritual powers and capacities bear the imprint 
of the Divine likeness; still, capacities and 
powers are not God's actual image, but merely 
its possibility. The higher import of the word 
' image ' points to the future. In what he pos- 
sesses already, he is created in the Divine image 
as his model ; but in reference to the chief mat- 
ter — his destination — he has in God a norm 
and ideal." 1 This is the crowning thought of all. 
Man was created in the likeness of God in his 
capacities and powers, that he might become 
like God in the perfect development of those 
capacities and powers. He is in the image of 
God in nature, that he may become the image of 
God in character. The foundation is of holy 

1 Systematic Theology, vol. ii. p. 77. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 41 

materials that the superstructure may be the 
holiness of God. 

Something of the sense in which man is in 
the image of God by nature, we now have before 
us. He is so in his spirituality, consciousness, 
personality, moral freedom, and ideal destiny. 
In one word, human nature is the Divine nature 
in miniature. In his spiritual nature man is a 
microcosm of Divinity. His spiritual being is a 
finite picture of the infinite Being. 

VII. — Human Character. 

But while man is in the image of God by na- 
ture, he is not in His image by character. 
Character, we have seen, is that which is devel- 
oped out of the nature, and is the product of 
the good or bad use of our powers. Certain it 
is, then, that human character, taken as a whole 
or in part, as embracing all mankind or a single 
individual, is not in the likeness of the Divine 
character. The character of empirical man is 
almost anything but Divine. It is full of divi- 
sions, separations, antagonisms, darkness, and 
depravity. Empirical man is an imperfect, 
ignorant, sinful, and often depraved creature. 



42 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

Here is the great gulf between God and man; 
it is not in man's nature, but in his character. 
His character is a one-sided, abnormal, sinful, 
twisted development of his nature. Hi's capaci- 
ties and powers are used for all purposes except 
the right one, so his character has all kinds of 
immoral taints and tendencies. 

Still, if these capacities and powers were de- 
veloped aright, if they were unfolded in the 
Divine way, if they were grown into a symmet- 
rical and perfect character, that character, it is 
clear, would be Divine, would be like the char- 
acter of God. Human nature being in the 
image of God, if that nature were perfectly 
and harmoniously developed, the character thus 
formed would also be in the image of God. If 
the idea of God in man were once fully realized, 
then man's character would be a perfect develop- 
ment of his nature, and he would be " the Son of 
God " both in nature and character. 

Now this idea is not realized. In empirical 
man "the idea and the actuality of the idea 
exist apart, the latter being the fruit of free 
acts and coming gradually into existence." 1 But 
if these two should once come together, if in one 

1 Systematic Theology, vol. ii. p. 80. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 43 

soul the ideal should become the actual, then 
that soul would be like God both in nature and 
character, and so a perfect representative of 
God. 

Suppose a human soul? created as it is in the 
Divine image, should have a complete and per- 
fect development, harmonious and sinless. We 
must always admit the possibility of this. We 
cannot allow that a sinful development is nec- 
essary to realize the Divine idea of man. "The 
possibility of a sinless development of man, in 
absolute harmony with His idea, must always be 
held fast, and at the same time the possibility 
of his passing through all the stages of life 
without fault and yet being true man. Evil can 
never be a part of man's nature. When it exists 
it is removable, conquerable, because eternally 
excluded from the idea of man." x That is, man 
does not realize the Divine idea in him by being 
a sinner, but by not being a sinner. 

Suppose, then, in all ways this soul has a sin- 
less development, full and complete. How evi- 
dent it is that he would be a perfect " child of 
God " ! He would be like God, not only in 
nature but in character. He would be a finite 

1 Systematic Theology, vol. ii. p. 74. 



44 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

picture of the infinite perfection. He would rep- 
resent, on a finite scale, all there is of God. He 
would be " the Son of God " by both nature and 
character. 

VIII. — The Nature and Character op 
Christ. 

From the doctrine taught concerning human 
nature it is easy to see that there can be no an- 
tithesis between that nature and the nature of 
God. These natures are not opposed to each 
other. There is no such great gulf between 
them as theology has so long taught. A true 
view of human nature effectually bridges this 
gulf, or rather completely fills it up. Human 
nature being in the image of the Divine nature, 
they in no way antagonize each other, but are 
in complete and perfect agreement. Their rela- 
tion is one of perfect harmony. 

Hence there is no difficulty in uniting them in 
Christ or in seeing that His nature could not 
have essentially differed from the nature of 
either God or man. If it is said that His nature 
was Divine, we answer, Yes, and it was human 
also ; for the Divine nature is like human na- 
ture. If it is said that His nature was human, we 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 45 

answer, Yes, and it was Divine also ; for human 
nature is like the Divine nature. That is to say, 
Christ's nature was both human and Divine, 
because the human and the Divine nature are 
essentially the same. In nature they all stand 
on the same plane, — all rank in the same cate- 
gory of being. One relation is common to them 
all. They all belong to one family and are 
bound together by a common oneness, a one- 
ness of nature. In nature, therefore, Christ is 
both " the Son of God " and " the son of man." 
His native capacities and powers are like the 
native capacities and powers of both God and 
man. He is a conscious, free, spiritual person- 
ality like both God and man. 

He differs from either only in degree. That 
He differs from God in degree is evident. He is 
a created being, and therefore limited in all His 
powers. God is infinite, He is finite. His ca- 
pacities and powers differ from those of God in 
quantity, though not in quality. He is not God, 
but " the Son of God." 

That He differs from man in degree is not so 
clear. That His capacities and powers are nat- 
urally greater than those of man is possible. A 
richness and fulness of nature may be claimed 



46 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

for Him that do not belong to ordinary man. 
But this is a point difficult to determine, for we 
have no estimate of the richness and fulness of 
man's nature. The human soul is a deep that 
has never yet been fathomed. It has possibili- 
ties of which mankind has as yet no knowledge. 
" Our being is deeper than we know ; it under- 
grounds all conscious existence. " 1 " When we 
look at the genesis of thoughts, how they arise in 
us originally and independently, whether they be 
the suggestions of love or knowledge, we notice 
that there is in our souls a mysterious world, not 
made by us, with a wealth compared to which our 
actual productions are poverty ; and although we 
are not masters of that wealth, still such happy 
moments show us what we should and could 
be." 2 Knowing so little, therefore, of the real 
wealth of our own souls, it is hardly worth 
while to speculate as to the superior wealth of 
the soul of Christ. Enough for us to know that 
His soul was essentially a human soul. He 
was emphatically a man, though not empirical 
man. His nature was really and truly human 
nature. 

i Hedge's Ways of the Spirit, p. 357. 
2 Systematic Theology, vol. iii. p. 357. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 47 

It is manifest therefore how Christ was both 
"the Son of God" and " the son of man." He 
was "the Son of God" by nature and He was 
" the son of man " by nature. His nature was 
both human and Divine, for it was like the na- 
ture of both God and man, since their natures 
are like each other. 

The character of Christ, however, was not 
human character. It was not the character of 
empirical man, not the character that experience 
shows man to possess. We have seen that the 
great difference between God and man is in 
character. Man's character separates him from 
God. He is not godlike in character. So it is 
man's character that separates him from Christ, 
Not his nature but his character separates em- 
pirical man from " the son of man." 

Man's character is a one-sided, imperfect, sin- 
ful development of his nature. Christ's charac- 
ter is an all-sided, perfect, symmetrical, sinless 
development of His nature. In the space of a 
few years He developed a complete, Divine man- 
hood. He was so environed by the spirit of God 
that in this short time He grew a sinless charac- 
ter that was a perfect development of His god- 
like nature and so a perfect moral likeness of 



48 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

the Divine character. " And Jesus increased in 
wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and 
man." 1 He " was in all points tempted like as 
we are, jet without sin." 2 

Jesus grew ; He had a development. His 
character was not imposed upon Him, but was 
evolved from within Him. Like all human char- 
acter, it was a growth. " In the cognitive and 
volitional aspect He remains in a process of de- 
velopment even up to His death." But it was 
a sinless growth; He never grew wrong; His 
development was without transgression. He 
was so guarded, guided, and helped, that His na- 
ture unfolded without sin into a complete and 
perfect character. In His life there were no an- 
tagonisms or contradictions. His character did 
not belie His nature, but was a legitimate and 
symmetrical development of His nature. 

Hence His character separated Him from 
man. While like man in nature, His perfect sin- 
less development lifted Him above man in char- 
acter, — that is, above empirical man, — and 
constituted Him a unique being. He was a 
moral miracle. His special and unique develop- 
ment put Him outside and in advance of the 

1 Luke ii. 52. 2 Hebrews iv. 15. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 49 

ordinary process of human unfolding and be- 
yond the range of ordinary human character, 
and constituted Him " the miraculous Child." 

But while His character separated Him from 
man, it united Him to God. Having a Divine na- 
ture, divinely unfolded, He became a child of God 
after a " unique fashion." He became His child 
both in nature and character. He was like God 
not only in nature but in life and character, and 
so between them there was complete harmony, 
perfect " oneness." He thought the thoughts 
of God, loved the things of God, willed the pur- 
poses of God, spoke the words and did the works 
of God. So He is the representative of God. 
He is the " Emmanuel," " God with us," God on 
a finite scale. He holds the perfections of the 
Infinite within the limits of finite possibility. 

At the same time He is the realization of the 
Divine idea of man. The ideal became actual in 
Him. God's idea of man came to realization 
first in Jesus the Christ. He first realized 
among men the idea of man which God had 
in the beginning. In Him the Divine-human 
image was realized in its ideal perfection. 
Hence He was at the same time the represen- 
tative of God and the example and destiny of 



50 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

man. He reveals in Himself God, Duty, Destiny, 
He shows us what God is, what man ought to 
be, and what man is to be. 

So we understand the relation which Christ 
sustains to both God and man. He is " the Son 
of man " by nature. He is like man in nature, 
and will be like man both in nature and charac- 
ter when man shall have realized his destiny. 
But He is "the Son of God" both by nature 
and character. His Divine sonship is twofold, 
while His human sonship is only onefold. He 
is like God both in nature and character, but He 
is like man as yet only in nature. Blessed be the 
day when man shall be like Him in character ! 

IX. — Christ the Word of God. 

Turning to the New Testament for confirma- 
tion of these views, let us first consider the doc- 
trine of "the Logos," "the Word." This 
doctrine is peculiar to John. No writer except 
John calls Christ distinctively "the Word." 
Other writers call the gospel or the teachings 
of Christ " the Word of God," but only John 
applies this term directly to the Saviour. This 
he does in a special manner in the introduction 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 51 

of his Gospel, where he seems to teach a some- 
what peculiar doctrine concerning Christ. Let 
us see if we can unfold it. 

We have explained that the term " Word " 
denotes the outward form of the inward thought, 
and sometimes it is used to cover both the in- 
ward thought and outward expression, and that 
this is the real meaning of the original " Logos." 
That is, it may be both subjective and objective ; 
may be a spoken and unspoken word. In both 
of these senses John uses it, we apprehend, in 
the prologue of his Gospel. He first uses it in a 
subjective sense. 

" In the beginning was the Word, and the 
Word was with God, and the Word was God." 
Here the term signifies the unspoken word of 
God, that is, His thought, plan, purpose, or 
" world-idea." It denotes the subjective word, 
the creative thought or idea, in the mind of God. 
This word, this creative thought, was in " the 
beginning," — before all else, before the creative 
word was spoken. " The Word was with God." 
It belonged to Him and not to any inferior being. 
It was His thought or idea, and not that of 
another. 

" And the Word was God." This creative 



52 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

word or idea was not as yet separated from God, 
but was so much of Him and in Him, that, fig- 
uratively speaking, it may be called God, as a 
man's thoughts may be called the man. Or we 
may understand the neuter verb here as we do 
in the expression, " This is my body." That is, 
this represents or is like my body. So " the 
Word " represents or is like God. The creative 
thought or idea that possessed the mind of God 
was pre-eminently a Godlike idea. It was an 
idea not like that of man or any inferior being, 
but like God. Thus far the term " Word " is 
used in a subjective sense, to denote the creative 
idea in the mind of God. 

But now John proceeds to show the objecti- 
fication of this word, to unfold the process 
whereby this creative idea in the mind of God 
realized itself. " All things were made by it, 1 
and without it was not anything made that was 
made." 2 The first step in the objectifying or 
uttering of the Divine creative idea or word 

1 The Greek does not demand that the term " Word " 
should be followed in English by the masculine pronoun. It 
is just as correct to translate " it " as " Him," and more con- 
sistent with the thought. 

2 The second verse is a repetition and adds nothing to the 
thought. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 53 

was in creation. All things were made by or 
in accordance with this creative idea or plan. 
Hence " the invisible things of Him from the 
creation of the world are clearly seen, being 
understood by the things that are made, even 
His eternal power and Godhead." 1 God so ut- 
tered His word, His creative thought, in external 
Nature that God may be known by His works. 

For in this objectified word, in this Divine 
idea in creation, " is Life, and the life is the Light 
of men." In this creative idea, realizing itself 
in the natural world, there is the life, the very 
energy of God ; and in this life there is light for 
men, if they have eyes to see it. " But the light 
shineth in darkness, and the darkness compre- 
hendeth it not." The darkened or undeveloped 
mind of man did not see the Divine light in 
Nature ; or perhaps John refers to a time when 
there was no created being to observe this light, 
man not yet having come into existence. In 
the next place John proceeds to state how this 
creative word or idea was objectified or real- 
ized in human nature. 2 " That was the true 

1 Romans i. 20. 

2 We omit what is said about John the Baptist, as having 
no necessary connection with the line of thought. 



54 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

light that lighteth every man that eometh into 
the world." That is, " the universal human 
reason," the objectifying of the creative idea in 
the human soul, the creating of man in the image 
of God, was the light of every soul that eometh 
into the world. This Divine life in the human 
soul is the light of that soul. By this light 
every soul may see itself, see the external world, 
and see God. But this human world did not see 
the light of God in its own nature. " It was in 
this world, and this world was made by it, and 
yet this world did not know it." Even though 
God had objectified His thought not only in 
Nature, but in the human soul, — had created 
man in His own image, — yet man did not know 
it, did not see God even in his own soul. 

The next step, therefore, is revelation. Men 
not seeing God with any clearness in Nature 
or the human soul, John unfolds the process 
whereby God objectifies His word in human his- 
tory. He takes a segment of that history and 
specially guides and directs it. He providen- 
tially calls men and inspires them to speak His 
word, utter His thought to mankind. His word 
came to men, but they only partly received it. 
44 It came to His own, but His own received it 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 55 

not." As a whole His chosen people did not re- 
ceive or understand His word. Some, however, 
did. Some received His word, and those that did, 
" to them it gave power to become the sons of 
God," — " he called them gods unto whom the 
word of God came," 1 — and they were born, not 
of " flesh and blood," but of the very will or 
spirit of God. 

Now comes the final step : " The Word was 
made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld 
His glory, the glory as of the only begotten of 
the Father." This is the first direct reference 
to Christ in this introduction. Up to this point 
John has been sketching the other ways in 
which God had realized His great creative idea, — 
in Nature, in the human soul, and in the provi- 
dential history of man, — but now he comes to 
the great matter, to the incarnation of that 
idea, to its realization in actual human life and 
character. " The Word was made flesh." This 
Divine creative idea became a man, — not em- 
pirical man but ideal man, a perfect realization 
of God's idea of man. The thought of man in 
the mind of God, and toward the realization of 
which He had been moving through all the ages, 

1 John x. 35. 



56 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

was fully realized in the man Christ Jesus. 
" The objectifying work of God reached its goal 
in Him, so that Christ was His absolute, objecti- 
fied image." This John affirms, for he tells us 
that " they beheld His glory, the glory as of the 
only begotten," or dearly beloved, " of the Fa- 
ther, full of grace and truth." His glory was as 
great as though he were " the only begotten of 
the Father;" as though God had never in any 
other way objectified His word. He was the 
complete realization of the idea that had moved 
the heart and hand of God from "the begin- 
ning." Toward that goal He had been working, 
and in that goal was seen the full glory of His 
great creative thought. " He was full of grace 
and truth." Others had realized some of God's 
grace and truth, but in Him that grace and truth 
were fully realized, " for in Him dwelleth all 
the fulness of the Godhead bodily." * 

Thus have we tried to set forth the doctrine 
taught in this introduction to the Gospel of John. 
While the object of this introduction is to guard 
the Church from Gnostic heresies, its form is 
suggested by the first chapter of Genesis. John 
has this chapter in mind, and frames his intro- 

1 Colossians ii. 9. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 57 

duction after it as a model. He outlines the 
process of the objectification or realization of 
the Divine Word or the Divine " world-idea " 
until it culminates ; until it is fully realized in 
Jesus Christ. 

Put for " Word " " the Divine world-idea," and 
follow the thought of John until it reaches " the 
Word made flesh," and the doctrine he teaches 
becomes clear. At first this " world-idea " is in 
the mind of God, then it comes forth in the 
material creation, then in the human soul, then 
in the providential history of man, and finally 
in the perfected life and character of Jesus the 
Christ. God's idea of the world, of man and 
his environment, is fully made known in Christ 
as the type of perfected humanity. What God 
has been thinking of from the beginning, and 
what He will be thinking of until the end, is 
revealed in Him. 

Hence He is the resolving light of all histor} r . 
He is the centre figure of the world ; He is 
that toward which all history points. He inter- 
prets all that has gone before and all that shall 
come after. For in Him God reveals the sublime 
truth, that the goal of the universe, the end for 
which all things exist, is to realize in every soul 



58 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

the Divine idea, even as it was realized in Christ ; 
to bring all into an oneness with God, even as 
He was at one with Him. 

The doctrine of John therefore is in perfect 
keeping with that we are teaching. Christ is 
the objectified Word of God, His Word become 
man, embodied in a perfect human life ; and so 
Christ is the Kepresentative of God. For " as 
our Word, being the utterance, is therewith the 
child (as it were) of our spirit, so the Word of 
God, being what the Epistle to the Hebrews 
calls ' the express image of His person ' is there- 
with the Son of God." 1 

X. — Christ the Image of God. 

As we have said, no writer of the New Testa- 
ment except John calls Christ " the Word of 
God." Other writers use the term " image." 
This seems to be a favorite term with Paul. 
Paul never applies the term " Word " to Christ. 
He never calls Jesus " the Logos," but he calls 
Him " the Ikon," the image of God. His thought, 
however, is the same. John uses a term which 
addresses the ear ; Paul, one that speaks to the 

1 Gospel of the Divine Life, p. 12. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 59 

eye. As Dorner says : " The word ' Logos ' is 
absent in Paul; he uses 'Ikon' (image). But 
what a word is to the ear, namely, a revelation 
of what is within, an ' Ikon ' is to the eye ; and 
thus in the expressions there is only a transla- 
tion, as it were, of the same fact from one sense 
to another." That is, what John means by "the 
Word," Paul means by " the image." A word 
is a sound picture addressed to the ear ; an im- 
age is a light picture addressed to the eye. They 
signify therefore the same thing, that is, the rep- 
resentation of the thought or idea for which they 
stand. 

Hence when Paul calls Christ " the image of 
God," 1 or " the image of the invisible God," 2 he 
means precisely what John does when he calls 
Him " the Word of God." He means that Christ 
was the positive, objectified likeness of God, His 
perfect representative among men. He does not 
mean that Christ was God, — for the image of 
anything cannot be the thing itself, — but he 
means that He was a perfect picture of God, 
representing in an actual human life and char- 
acter the thoughts, feelings, and purposes of God. 
Paul seems to take his figure from God's cre- 

1 2 Corinthians iv. 4. 2 Colossians i. 15. 



60 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

ating man in His own image, while John goes 
farther back and takes His from God's creating 
the world by His word. As God created man in 
His own image by nature, so Paul assures us that 
Christ was in all respects the very image of His 
Father. 

The author of Hebrews (who probably was not 
Paul) expresses the same idea in a still differ- 
ent term : he calls Christ " The brightness of " 
God's " glory and the express image of His per- 
son ; " 1 or as the New Version translates : " The 
effulgence of His glory and the very image of His 
substance." Here Christ is called " the image of 
God ; " but the word is not " Ikon," but " Kar- 
akter," a much stronger and more expressive 
word. It is the word from which we derive the 
term " character." It means " an engraved im- 
age," one wrought into or cut out of, as sculp- 
ture in marble. Hence Christ is the engraved, 
developed, sculptured image of God. His char- 
acter is in the very image of the Divine charac- 
ter. His glory is a reflection of the infinite 
glory, and His character is the very likeness, — 
cut, as it were, with an engraver's chisel, — of 
the real soul and substance of God, — that is, 

1 Hebrews i. 3. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 61 

the very heart of the Infinite is revealed in 
Jesus Christ. Here again is a very strong con- 
firmation of the doctrine we are unfolding : that 
Christ is not God, but the true Son of God, the 
living representative, the exact likeness, of the 
Most High. 

XI. — Christ the Eternal Life. 

Another title is given to Christ, especially by 
John, that adds something perhaps to the view 
already presented. He is called " the Life " and 
" the eternal Life." " I am the way, the truth, 
and the life." 1 " The Father hath life in Him- 
self, so hath He given to His Son to have life in 
Himself." 2 " God hath given to us eternal life ; 
and this life is in His Son." 3 " According to 
the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus." 4 
" He that hath the Son, hath life ; he that hath 
not the Son, hath not life." 5 In these passages 
Christ is called the Life, even the Life eternal. 
The meaning is that He is the spiritual life, the 
life of the eternal Spirit. The spirit, the soul of 
Christ, was alive with the life of God. 

1 John xiv. 6. 2 Ibid. v. 26. 3 1 John v. 11. 

4 2 Timothy i. 1. 5 1 John v. 12. 



62 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

The word of God in Him was a word of Power. 
The image of God in Him was a living image. 
It was no lifeless picture, no painting on canvas, 
no likeness in marble, but a living picture, an 
image in a real human soul, a likeness of 
spirit to spirit. The life of Christ was in har- 
mony with the life of God. His heart beat in 
unison with the great Heart of the universe. 
His inward, spiritual activities were so charged 
with the spirit of God that they acted harmoni- 
ously among themselves and with the activities 
of God. He never willed in opposition to the 
Divine will ; " it was His meat and drink to do 
that will," 1 and so His spiritual life was con- 
stantly fed and sustained with the life of God. 

Hence His power to impart life ; having life 
in Himself He can give life. Knowledge of Him 
and communion with Him impart life to all who 
thus come to Him. " And this is life eternal, that 
they might know Thee the only true God, and 
Jesus Christ, whom Thou hast sent." 2 In this 
knowledge of God in Christ there is life-giving 
power. It is not only light ; it is heat, it is inspi- 
ration, inward creative energy. In Christ, there- 
fore, as the objectified word, as the express 

1 John iv. 34. 2 John xvii. 3. 



JESUS THE CHEIST. 63 

image, we not only see God, but we feel Him. 
Our spiritual eye not only beholds a Divine like- 
ness, but our spiritual being feels the influx of a 
quickening, life-giving energy, and so He be- 
comes to us both " the power of God and the 
wisdom of God." 1 

From all this, then, the doctrine of the New 
Testament becomes evident. It is that Christ is 
not God, but the spoken word, " the express im- 
age," the living representative, of God. His na- 
ture, which was both human and Divine, like both 
the nature of God and of man, for they are like 
each other, was so developed and perfected that 
He became the realization of God's idea of man, 
and hence a true and perfect man and therefore 
a true and perfect child or Son of God, His 
" absolute objectified image ; " and so revealing in 
His own person, in His own life and character, 
what God is, what man ought to be, and what 
man is to be : God, Duty, Destiny. 

This view reconciles the apparently contradic- 
tory statements of Scripture. " No man hath 
seen God at any time ; the only begotten Son, 
which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath 
declared Him." 2 " He that hath seen Me hath 

1 1 Corinthians i. 24. 2 John i. 18. 



64 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

seen the Father." 1 No man hath seen God in 
person ; but all who see the Son see the Father, 
because the Son is the absolute image of the 
Father, - — His perfect representative. We see the 
Father in the Son, — not in person, but in spirit 
and life. 

This view explains also how Christ is one with 
God. " I am in the Father, and the Father in 
Me." 2 " That they all may be one, as Thou,Father, 
art in Me and I in Thee, that they all may be one 
in us." 3 " I and My Father are one." 4 The 
doctrine we are teaching gives a very clear ap- 
prehension of these Scriptures. Christ being the 
moral likeness, the perfect representative, of God, ' 
He is one with Him in spirit, purpose, and life. 
That the oneness is spiritual and not personal is 
evident ; for the Saviour prays that His disciples 
may share in the same oneness — " that they 
may be one even as we are one," 5 — which could 
not be if the oneness were that of personality. 
If Christ and God were absolutely one person, 
then the disciples could not possibly partake of 
the same oneness. But Christ being the image 
of God, His glorified Son, is at one with Him in 

1 John xiv. 10. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. xvii. 21. 

4 Ibid. x. 30. 5 ibid. xvii. 22. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 65 

spirit and purpose, in thought, feeling, and life ; 
and of this oneness the disciples might partake, 
and it was of vast importance that they should 
partake. Hence the earnestness of the Saviour's 
prayer: "That they all may be one, as Thou, 
Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they all 
may be one in us." 

But, still further, in the light of this truth 
that Christ is the perfect moral likeness of God 
and so His representative, that noted passage in 
Philippians becomes plain : " Have this mind in 
you which was also in Christ Jesus : who, being 
in the form of God, counted it not a prize to be 
on an equality with God, but emptied Himself, 
taking the form of a servant, being made in the 
likeness of men ; and being found in fashion as a 
man, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient 
even unto death, yea, the death of the cross. 
Wherefore also God highly exalted Him, and 
gave Him a name which is above every name, 
that at the name of Jesus every knee should 
bow, of things in heaven and things on earth 
and things under the earth, and that every 
tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, 
to the glory of God the Father." 1 

1 Philippians ii. 5-11 (New Version). 
5 



66 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

Here Paul teaches his favorite doctrine that 
Christ is the image of God : " Who being in the 
form of God," that is, in His potential likeness ; 
in His likeness though not yet realized. This 
is the first thing stated in this passage, that 
Christ is in the form or image of God. But be- 
ing in the form or image of God, He does not at 
once and off-hand grasp as a prize, or " eagerly 
seize," that equality or likeness 1 to God which 
belongs to Him ; but He first takes on Himself 
the " form of a servant " and " becomes obedi- 
ent unto death, even the death of the cross." 
" Wherefore," because He thus humbles Him- 
self, God exalts Him and gives Him " a name 
that is above every name," that all should at 
last confess that name " to the glory of God the 
Father." 

That is, Christ attains His exaltation through 
humiliation; "He is perfected through suffer- 
ing." 2 He does not at the outset realize His 
perfect spiritual equality or likeness to God ; 
but He attains to this realization gradually and 
through much service, trial, and suffering. Paul 
teaches the same doctrine here as elsewhere, 

1 " Isos " may properly be translated " like." 

2 Hebrews ii. 10. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 67 

— that Christ is the image of God ; but he also 
unfolds the process through which that image is 
realized. It was realized, developed, made mani- 
fest and potent through a process of painful 
experience, such as belongs to the common lot 
of man. Through the human sphere of toil and 
service and suffering Christ realized His own 
likeness to the Father. 

XII. — Christ the Revelation op God. 

From these teachings we pass readily to an 
apprehension of Christ as the revelation of God. 
Being a sound and light picture of God, the 
actual, living Word or image of God, the mani- 
festation of the Divine Life, we hear and see and 
feel the Father in the Son. Through Him the 
Father addresses and comes into communion 
with all our spiritual senses, — eye, ear, and 
hand. In Him we see the character of God, 
hear the voice of God, and feel the love of 
God. 

We must remember that Christianity was 
first of all a Life. It was not a science, not a 
philosophy, not a cultus : it was a Life, it was 
Jesus Christ living among men. His life was 



68: JESUS THE CHRIST. 

and is the gospel. He taught truth, but only 
the truth that was in Him. He taught noth- 
ing foreign to Himself ; He simply uttered 
what was in His own soul, spoke the living 
Word which He was. His teachings were but 
the outflow of His life. He taught as He lived, 
spontaneously, from His inward consciousness of 
God. 

Hence all He said, all He did, and all He suf- 
fered have profound significance, are of priceless 
value. They stand for the hidden glory of the 
Eternal. They reveal the inwardness of the 
Almighty. They lay open the heart of the Uni- 
verse. They make known the nature of that 
Power "in which we live and move and have 
our being." Christ was a revelation of God. 
There are other revelations. God reveals Him- 
self in Nature, in the human soul, and in the 
providential history of man. Christ is not unique 
in that He reveals God, for in some way all 
things reveal Him; but He is unique in the 
way in which He reveals Him. Christ reveals 
God in Himself, in His own life. The peculiar- 
ity of Christianity is, that it is a revelation of 
God in a person, in an actual life and character. 
Christ lived the Divine thought and will, and so 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 69 

realized that thought and will in the world, 
among men. He lived the Spirit that created 
and animates the universe, and so is an absolute 
manifestation of that Spirit. 

Therefore the measureless significance of His 
life. It stands for the great reality, the ever- 
lasting heart and core of things. When we look 
at Christ, behold His life, we see the Spirit that 
rules and fills and sways the universe. The 
heart of creation is seen in His life. Nature 
shows us the garments of the Almighty, the 
material symbols in which He hides His power ; 
but Christ reveals the Almighty, the absolute 
Beauty and the absolute Good. Everything in 
the life of Christ, therefore, has a Divine sig- 
nificance. It points to a glory that lies behind. 
It indicates a goodness and a power that has 
no limits. It photographs the perfection of the 
Infinite. His thoughts are the thoughts of God. 
His words are the words of the voiceless Spirit. 
His will is the will of the Absolute. His teach- 
ings are the teachings of Him " who is through 
all, above all, and in us all." 

His miracles have something more than an 
evidential power ; they have a spiritual meaning. 
Thev are a " transactional " revelation, a revela- 



70 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

tion in deed. In them Christ acted out the Spirit 
that animates the universe. They manifest the 
all-healing, elevating, and redeeming love of 
God. The saving grace of the Most High is 
displayed in His marvellous works. He not only 
taught the love of God, He showed that love 
in His deeds, He acted it out in healing the sick 
and raising the dead, in causing the blind to see, 
the deaf to hear, the lame to walk, and the dead 
to live. 

His sufferings and death are also a revelation. 
They show us the self-sacrificing element in the 
Divine love. They reveal to us the nature of 
that love, — that it is a love that dies to save ; 
that finds its own life in doing and giving, in 
sacrificing for the life of others, in going out 
of itself to create and save and bless. " But 
God commendeth His love toward us in that 
while we were yet sinners Christ died for us." * 
Christ's death was a revelation or manifestation 
of the love of God to a sinful world. His death, 
therefore, was something more than that of a 
martyr. He did not die merely as a martyr to 
the truth. He did die as a martyr. In His 
death He bore witness to the truth, " for He was 

1 Romans v. 8. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 71 

obedient unto death, even the death of the 
cross ; " but this does not exhaust the meaning 
of His death. His death means more than this ; 
He died as a representative of God. His death 
was an object lesson, drawn by the hand of the 
Infinite Love. The loving heart of the Infinite 
was revealed in His death. In that agony in the 
garden and in that tragedy on Calvary, we see 
something of the depth and power of the Father's 
love for His children. We see how that love 
gives and sacrifices for the beings loved. His 
death, therefore, was not only the death of a 
martyr, but it was also a conscious yielding up 
of life, that the wondrous love of God might be 
manifested to a sinful world, to the end that that 
world might be saved. 

His resurrection is also a revelation. Like 
everything else, it has two sides to it, an out- 
ward and an inward, and the outward is a 
revelation of the inward. It not only revealed 
the continuous life of the Spirit, but also the 
indwelling life of God, that is raising man to a 
higher and still higher life. So Christ in all He 
was, did, and suffered is a revelation of God. 
The whole gospel is in His life. In Him Chris- 
tianity existed actually and therefore potentially. 



72 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

The gospel in the world to-day was first in 
Christ, and out of Him it has been developed. 
Thus Christ, being the representative of God, 
His " absolute objectified image," is a revelation 
of God in such a way that in seeing the Son we 
see the very heart of the Father, His inward 
spirit, life, and glory. 

XIII. — Christ the Example and Destiny of 

Man. 

But Christ is not only the revelation of God. 
He is also the example of man, and therefore a 
type of what man ought to be and is to be. 
That Christ is our example, the Scriptures 
clearly teach. The Saviour's constant exhorta- 
tion is, "Follow Me," and the teaching of the 
Apostles, " Seek to be ' conformed unto His 
image,' 1 to attain unto a perfect man, ' unto the 
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ,' 2 
to be ' changed into His image from glory to 
glory ; '" 3 and Peter tells us expressly that 
" Christ suffered for us, leaving us an example, 
that we should follow His steps." 4 Christ, 

1 Romans viii. 29. 2 Ephesians iv. 13. 

s 2 Corinthians iii. 18. 4 1 Peter ii. 21. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 73 

then, is our example. He shows us what we 
ought to do and be. We ought to be like Him ; 
we ought to live as He lived. Not only in His 
teachings, but in His own life and character, 
He sets before us our duty. What we are to be 
and do is made known not only by Him, but in 
Him. We are to take Him as our example, and 
follow Him, imitate Him, make His life the 
ideal and the inspiration of our lives. 

But we are not to regard Him as our example 
in any stiff, formal, perfunctory way. He is not 
to be thought of as " busying himself," while on 
earth, " in setting an example." We are not to 
think of Him as some superior being, living 
among men merely to show them how they ought 
to live. He was not " acting a part " in the 
great drama of life. Far from it. He lived out 
spontaneously the life that was in Him. What 
He appeared to be, He was. His deeds were but 
the outflow of His spirit. In Him the ideal and 
the real were one. He realized in Himself the 
ideal life of man, not in a formal, unnatural 
way, but in a perfectly natural, real way. He 
was not another order of being, acting in 
human dress for man's enlightenment, but He 
was a man, living a manly life among men, 



74 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

and so showing them the life they ought to 
live. 

It follows that we are to be no formal imita- 
tors of Christ ; that we are not to follow Him in 
the letter. We are under no obligations to do 
the same things that He did. He washed His 
disciples' feet ; we are not therefore to wash 
each other's feet. That is "the letter that 
killeth." We are to follow Him in the spirit. 
His life was not a machine life, but a spiritual 
life, a life of intelligence and freedom. It is not 
our duty, therefore, to do just what He did, but 
to do whatever we do in His spirit, under the 
inspiration of His light and life, and so grow 
characters that shall be like His. 

The ground of this duty is evident. Christ 
being like us in nature, we can be like Him in 
character. His character being the result of 
developing harmoniously and perfectly a nature 
that is like ours, we can so develop our natures 
that our character will be like His. The pos- 
sibility of our developing a Christlike charac- 
ter, and so of Christ being our example, lies in 
the fact that His nature and ours are essentially 
the same. Were they not, were they radically 
different, we could not develop characters like 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 75 

His, and He could not be our example. Were 
He of another and higher order of beings, He 
could not be our example ; for we could not live 
His life. To be our example, He must belong to 
our order ; He must be a member of the human 
family. He is our example, then, because His 
nature is like ours. He is like us in nature ; 
therefore we can become like Him in character. 
He has realized the Divine idea of man ; there- 
fore we can realize that idea ; we can become 
real, true men, even as He was "the man Christ 
Jesus." 

Consequently Christ is a revelation of man, 
not only to man but of man. He reveals man to 
himself ; He shows him the possibilities of his 
own nature ; He shows man what he can be. 
He can be Divine, he can be Godlike even as 
Christ was ; he can realize the Divine ideal in 
his own life. Every soul can be what God de- 
signed him to be. He can be a true child of 
God, a child of God in the likeness of moral 
character, a perfect man in Christ Jesus. All 
this Christ reveals of man in the fact that He is 
our example. 

But Christ is not only man's example, He is 
man's destiny. In Himself, in His own life and 



76 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

character, He reveals what man is to be. He 
realized God's idea of man, therefore He shows 
in Himself what man's destiny is. " When He 
shall appear, we shall be like Him." x " For 
whom He did foreknow, He also did predestinate 
to be conformed to the image of His Son, that 
He might be the first-born among many breth- 
ren." 2 To be like Christ, to be " conformed to 
His image," is the destiny of man. Man reaches 
his destiny, achieves the goal of his being when 
he lives the life of Christ, and just in proportion 
as he lives that life. Just to the degree a man 
lives the Christian life, just to that degree does 
he realize his own destiny ; and when he attains 
unto the fulness of that life, he will attain unto 
the fulness of that destiny which God designed 
for him. 

In Christ, therefore, heaven is revealed. He 
shows us what constitutes heaven. He elimi- 
nates from the world's thought all materialistic 
notions of heaven by giving it — heaven in the 
concrete — in an actual life. Heaven is not a 
place, but a Divine life, a Christlike character. 
We go to heaven, not by dying, but by living, — - 
by living the " Life Eternal." As we have His life, 

1 1 John iii. 2. 2 Romans viii. 29. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 77 

we have heaven ; and we shall never have 
heaven in all of its fulness until we have the 
fulness and completeness of His life. 

We see, therefore, something of the greatness 
and grandeur of the revelation which Christ 
makes. He reveals God, duty, destiny. In Him- 
self He shows us " our Father ; " what we ought 
to be, and what we are to be. He is at once the 
image of God, the example of man, and the 
type of man's destiny. What God is in His 
inward life, and what man is in his native pos- 
sibilities and ideal perfection, shine in radiant 
glory from the face of Jesus the Christ. 

XI Y. — Christ the Prophet, Priest, and King. 

The doctrine of the office of Christ lies be- 
tween that of His person and His work. It 
marks the transition from the doctrine of Christ 
to the doctrine of salvation. Having considered 
the person of Christ, the next step is to consider 
His office, which naturally leads forward to His 
work. After the doctrine of His person comes 
naturally the doctrine of His office. His official 
character bears a close relation to His personal 
character; hence our work would hardly seem 
complete without some notice of His office. A 



78 JESUS THE CHRIST 

brief word concerning His office, therefore, will 
close our labor. 

Under the head of the title of this book we 
showed that the term " Christ " signified, in the 
beginning at least, the office rather than the per- 
son of the Master. But we showed also that 
this distinction between the office and the per- 
son is really one of convenience rather than of 
anything else ; that it exists in thought rather 
than in fact. This is a point that needs to 
be emphasized. We need to see clearly that 
Christ's office is not one thing and His person 
another ; that in His official character He is not 
something radically different from what He is 
in His personal character. His person really 
is His office. What He is constitutes what He 
does. His private life is His public life. His 
official character flows out naturally and spon- 
taneously from His personal character. When 
He became the Christ of God, when He realized 
the Divine idea, when He had developed His own 
individual consciousness of God, and felt Himself 
to be at one with the Father, He became the 
Saviour of the world, 1 the prophet, priest, and 

1 The work of Christ in the salvation of the world will be 
considered in another volume of this series. — Editor. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 79 

king of men. He is the " power of God unto 
salvation," because in and of Himself He is the 
love, the wisdom, and the power of God. The 
saving life that He diffuses is only the saving 
life that He is. The truth that He teaches is 
nothing more than the truth that He is. His 
redeeming grace is only the wondrous love that 
His own soul has realized and made His own. 
We are not, then, to think of the office of Christ 
as something distinct from Himself. We are 
not to separate the office and the person in any 
such way as to make the office a mere function 
or performance of the person. He saves the 
world by what He is, not by what He does; 
hence we are to think of Him as our personal, 
not merely as our official, Saviour. In fine, we 
are to think of His office, not as something added 
to Him or conferred upon Him, but as something 
inhering in Him, in His very life and charac- 
ter, as the embodiment and outflow of His own 
personal Divine consciousness. Because of His 
own consciousness of God, God was in Him 
44 reconciling the world unto Himself." 

It is therefore only for convenience or for the 
purposes of thought, of better apprehension and 
clearer view, that we treat of the official charac- 



80 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

ter of Christ as something separate from His 
personal character. We speak of His office to 
make clear His work. In fact, the office of 
Christ is the relation He bears to human needs. 
When we speak of the office of Christ we speak 
of the relation He bears to the conscious needs 
of mankind ; it is merely Christ viewed from 
the standpoint of what man needs and of what 
Christ does for him. His official character is 
His personal character in its adaptedness to the 
different states of human consciousness. We 
are conscious of certain moral and spiritual 
needs. Christ in His own life meets and satis- 
fies those needs. Hence in His work of meeting 
and satisfying those needs, we see Him in His 
official character; we see His office in His work 
in and for man. 

The whole work of Christ may be expressed 
in one word, " at-one-ment." His work is to bring 
man into at-one-ment with God, to reconcile the 
children unto the Father, and grow them into 
a permanent oneness with Him. Christ was in 
perfect agreement, harmony, oneness with God ; 
and to bring man into the same oneness consti- 
tutes His work. We treat this work under dif- 
ferent forms, call it by different names, but it is 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 81 

all included in this oneness with God. To bring 
man into this oneness, to make him one with 
God in spirit, purpose, and life, is the whole 
work of Christ. His office, therefore, is His 
way or method of doing this work. His official 
character is seen in His method of at-one-ing 
man with God, of drawing the world into this 
spiritual oneness with the Father. 

Now this character is usually divided into that 
of prophet, priest, and king. In His office, in 
His work of bringing the world to God, Christ is 
regarded as holding and exercising this threefold 
office. But we must guard against absolutely 
dividing His office, of separating these offices 
one from another, in such a way that Christ is 
at one time prophet, at another priest, and at 
another king. There is really no such division 
of Christ. Officially He is a unit, as He is per- 
sonally. His office is one, as His person is one. 
He is not at one time prophet, at another priest, 
and at another king, — prophet and priest on 
earth, and king in heaven, — but He is prophet, 
priest, and king at once and at all times. All 
these offices are united in Him and go constantly 
to make His official character. Indeed, they are 
but different aspects of the same thing. They 

6 



82 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

are His office and work viewed from different 
standpoints. Viewed from one class of human 
needs, Christ is a prophet; from another He 
is a priest; from another He is a king. Or, 
seen in the light of experience, of what we are 
conscious Christ does for us, He is to us at 
one time prophet, at another priest, at another 
king. 

When He comes to us as a teacher of truth, 
as a preacher of righteousness, He is a prophet. 
We are conscious of our ignorance, of our need 
of knowledge, of moral and spiritual enlight- 
enment. We feel very keenly the darkness of 
our souls, the dense clouds that often cover our 
pathway, and we cry for light. We would know 
the right, we would have the way pointed out ; we 
would know God, duty, and destiny. Hence Christ 
comes to us as the Light. In this experience, 
He is to us the prophet of God. He speaks to 
us the eternal Word and opens to us the ever- 
lasting kingdom. He shows us the way of life 
and salvation. He teaches us concerning those 
things that make for our peace. He bears to us 
a message from God, and illuminates our path- 
way with rays from the " Sun of righteousness." 
His prophetic office is His teaching office. In 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 83 

His relation to us in our need of light and 
knowledge, He is a prophet. 

But man is conscious not only of the need of 
moral light, but also of saving power. He 
knows himself to be a sinner. He is conscious 
not only that he is ignorant of God, but that he 
is alienated from Him ; that he is out of harmony 
with the spirit of the universe ; that the real na- 
ture of things is against him ; that in some way 
he is down in the valley and unable alone to 
climb " the evergreen mountains of life." This 
experience of sin is the widest, deepest, and 
darkest, as well as the most painful, experience 
of mankind. Man needs, therefore, a power that 
can help him in this experience, that can lift 
him out of his sin, that can reconcile him to 
God, that can speak for him and go with him to 
the throne of grace, that can open to him the foun- 
tain of mercy, that can lead and bear him back 
to the Father's house and impart to him the con- 
sciousness of restored harmony, renewed favor, 
and everlasting possibility. Christ, therefore, in 
His relation to man's consciousness of sin, is a 
priest. His priestly office is His power to recon- 
cile man to God, to bear in upon the sinner's 
soul a consciousness of the Father's undying 



84 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

love, and so bear the sinner back to the Father's 
house and restore within him the assurance of 
Divine favor and the courage for future achieve- 
ment. In His capacity of atoning for human sin 
by restoring, through faith and repentance, that 
oneness with God that the sinner has lost, He 
is a priest. His priestly office is that of " peace- 
maker," of making peace with God, of reconcil- 
ing the sinful children to the Father by lifting 
them out of, or turning them away from, their 
sin. 

But man needs also a king, — some power to 
rule and reign over him or in him. He needs 
this in his individual capacity. He needs some 
one to speak to him with authority and command 
his obedience. We are all conscious of this need. 
We all feel the need of some power to reign over 
us or within us. We are conscious that we are 
not sufficient for our own government and con- 
trol ; that we need a power enthroned somewhere, 
in our own souls or out, to which we must bow, 
and whose voice shall be to us the voice of God. 
Individually, we all feel the need of a Messiah, 
one anointed of God to rule our spirits. 

But if we are conscious of this need in our 
individual capacity, much more are we in our 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 85 

associate capacity. Government has ever been 
one of the prime necessities of mankind. Men 
must be governed, or they cannot live together. 
If communities of human beings are to exist, 
they must be governed; there must be some rule 
over them. This is just as true religiously as 
politically. If men are to associate together re- 
ligiously, they must be governed; there must be 
an authority to which all bow, a reigning power 
which all acknowledge, a power which answers 
for king. But man is a social being ; whatever 
he does he does in company ; to whatever end 
he lives, he lives in society. Touch his social 
instinct therefore with religion, and he must 
have his church, his religious community. He 
cannot live his religion alone ; he must live it in 
the society of his fellow-men, in communion 
with kindred souls ; he must associate with others 
in doing his religious work ; and this association, 
this church, must have a head, a reigning power, 
a ruling spirit. 

Not only would there never have been any 
Christianity without Christ, there never would 
have been any Christian Church. Christ is as in- 
dispensable to the existence of the Church as He 
is to the existence of the gospel. The Church 



86 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

grew out of Him and around Him. It is the de- 
velopment of His leadership, the outgrowth of 
His following. Because men were moved to 
follow Him as Lord and Master, therefore the 
Church. His spiritual majesty, His royal leader- 
ship in the realm of religion, created the Church. 

We must never forget that all we call Chris- 
tianity existed first potentially in Christ. The 
Christian Scriptures and the Christian Church 
were both, first of all, in the life of Jesus. The 
Scriptures are not the foundation of the Church 
or of Christianity, but only the record of 
its beginning. 

Destroy the record, therefore, and you do not 
destroy the Christ. As Dr. Newman Smyth 
says : " Even if you should break the Bible to 
pieces, the evidence of the ultimate spiritual per- 
sonality of Jesus the Christ would not be de- 
stroyed. Break the glass to pieces, and you will 
not rid yourself of the evidence of the sun which 
shone in it ; still every fragment and bit of glass 
at your feet will throw its beam of light up into 
your eye." * The Church is a living witness to 
the reality of Christ which rro broken Bible could 
destroy. Christ's personal reign in the hearts 

1 Reality of Faith, p. 40. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 87 

of men, drawing them into communion with 
Himself and building them into the temple of 
the Lord, is an everlasting testimony to His past 
history and present glory. The Church, as a 
creation of His royal presence, becomes a wit- 
ness of that presence ; for without Christ there 
could have been no Church, since there would 
have been no power to create and govern it. 

Thus is Christ prophet, priest, and king in His 
answer to the conscious needs of mankind. He 
is prophet in His teaching office, priest in His 
saving energy, and king in His reigning power. 
He meets man's conscious need of light, of help, 
and of authority, and all this in His own person- 
ality. In w T hat He is, as " the Son of man and 
the Son of God," He is prophet, priest, and king. 
These terms only set before us the one work 
which He does, — the leading and drawing and 
educating man into His own oneness with God ; 
and this work He does by realizing in His own 
life the Divine truth, the Divine way, and the 
Divine life. 

It is to be observed, however, that we are 
dealing here with analogies, not with identities. 
This has been implied in all we have said, but 
it needs to be made explicit. Christ is analo- 



88 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

gous to the world's prophets, priests, and kings, 
but He is not absolutely like any of them. Be- 
tween Him and them there is a resemblance, but 
no exact similarity. The world never saw a 
prophet, priest, or king, who was exactly like 
Christ. Only in some respects does the likeness 
hold, and the contrast is always much greater 
than the comparison. 

Surely no one will contend that Christ is really 
like any of the kings of this world. He is not 
like an earthly monarch except in the mere fact 
that He reigns. In all other respects He con- 
trasts with this world's rulers. They rule the 
world without, He rules the world within ; they 
control the hands, He controls the heart ; they 
rule by force, He rules by love ; they compel 
obedience, He wins obedience ; they reign by vir- 
tue of their office, He reigns by virtue of what 
He is ; their power lies in armed legions, His 
power lies in His own personality, in the grace 
and magnetism of His own life and character, in 
His own Divine manhood. 

Equally clear is it that no prophet of the world 
was ever just like Christ. Doubtless Christ was 
more like the Hebrew prophet than any other 
character in the world's history. He spoke from 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 89 

God to man and preached the everlasting right- 
eousness, even as the prophets of Israel and 
Judah. He confesses to the possession and ex- 
ercise of the prophetic office: "The Spirit of the 
Lord is upon Me, because He hath anointed Me 
to preach the gospel to the poor; He hath sent 
Me to heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliv- 
erance to the captives, and recovering of sight to 
the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 
to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 1 

The Hebrew prophet, however, was no exact 
prototype of Christ ; he resembled Christ only 
in the fact that he uttered the voice of God to 
man. In the form, manner, and largely in the 
contents of his teaching, he differed widely from 
the Son of man. The prophet spoke strongly, 
often fiercely ; Christ, with the calmness and 
sweetness of assured truth and conscious power 
" of one having authority." The prophet spoke 
in the superlative degree ; Christ seldom, if ever, 
left the positive. The one spoke as he was 
moved by the Holy Spirit ; the other out of the 
spirit of holiness that filled His own soul. The 
one uttered the Word of God as it came to him ; 
the other uttered the Word of God that was in 

i Luke iv. 18, 19. 



90 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

Him. The one appealed to an objective law, the 
other to the subjective law of His own oneness 
with God. The one said, " Keep the law, and thou 
shalt have peace ;" the other said, " Come unto 
Me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I 
will give you rest." All the teaching of Christ 
was really about Christ, the unfolding of His one- 
ness with the Father, and the way of that oneness 
for man. His life was His sermon. Out of the 
great realities He saw and felt in Himself, He 
spoke. Christ " saw all things. He pierced to 
the meaning of this world ; He understood day 
and night ; He looked into the heart of the age ; 
He knew the secret of history ; He entered into 
the depths of humanity and knew life and man ; 
He saw all things and Himself in God, and God 
in all ; and out of such a union sprang the spon- 
taneous conviction of Eternal Life as the key to 
all and the end of all." 1 The prophetic office of 
Christ, therefore, is unique. In a large sense He 
was a prophet not after the manner of men. 

But as a priest Christ is supposed to come into 
close relation with the priests of men. The He- 
brew priest is thought to be the special archetype 
of Christ. The priestly office of Christ is thought 

1 Munger's Appeal to Life, pp. 303, 301. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 91 

to be a lineal descendant of the priestly office 
under the law. He, as priest, sacrificed Himself, 
thereby satisfying the legal requirements of God, 
largely in the same way as the sacrifices offered 
by the priests of the old dispensation. It is a 
curious fact, however, that Christ never calls 
Himself a priest, and is never so called by any 
writer of the New Testament, except the author 
of Hebrews. As Martineau says: "It deserves 
notice, that, unless as the name of His enemies, 
the word " priest " never occurs either in the his- 
torical or epistolary writings of the New Testa- 
ment, except in the Epistle to the Hebrews." x 
In Hebrews Christ is professedly compared to the 
Jewish high-priest, but the comparison turns out 
to be almost a contrast. Christ is nearly every- 
thing that the high-priest is not. The high-priest 
is in the hereditary line ; Christ is a priest after 
the order of Melchizedeck," without descent, hav- 
ing neither beginning of days nor end of life." 2 
The high-priest offers other things ; Christ offers 
Himself. The one sacrificed once every year; the 
other once for all. The high-priest entered the 
holy place yearly for a short time ; Christ entered 

1 Studies of Christianity, p. 60. 

2 Hebrews vii. 3. 



92 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

the heavenly home forever. In fine, the priest- 
hood of the one is outward, external, ceremonial, 
temporal ; that of the other, inward, spiritual, 
real, and eternal. The foundation for the priest- 
ly office of Christ, therefore, is slight. As com- 
pared with the priests of the law r , He is one in 
little more than in name. The analogy between 
Him and the Jewish high-priest is anything but 
apparent. It was evidently seized upon by the 
author of Hebrews in order to commend the gos- 
pel to the Hebrew Christians. It has little foun- 
dation in fact. 

All that can be claimed for it is that the bene- 
fit the Hebrew people received from their high- 
priest was something like the benefit the sinner 
receives from Christ. As the high-priest re- 
stored or proclaimed once a year the legal or 
ceremonial at-one-ment between God and His 
people, so Christ brings back the lost harmony 
between God and the sinner. So far as this the 
analogy may extend ; farther it does not. If we 
look to it to teach us how Christ restores this 
harmony, we shall look in vain or be misled. 
No study of the Hebrew priesthood can aid us 
much in solving the problem of the atonement. 
Christ is a priest in such a radically different 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 93 

sense from any priest under the law, that no 
study of the legal priesthood can lead us into a 
right apprehension of the free, spiritual priest- 
hood of Christ. Christ is an inward, spiritual 
priest ; therefore He cannot help man by any 
external, legal sacrifice, but only by a sacrifice 
of the spirit. Schleiermacher, in our opinion, 
grasps the real heart of the matter when he 
attributes the redemptive force in Christ to His 
world-wide and world-deep sympathy. His doc- 
trine, as stated by Dorner, is that " Christ's suf- 
fering proper consisted in this, that His outer 
suffering, caused by sinners, presented to Him 
as in a mirror the depth and extent of sin, 
and stirred His sympathy in the most powerful 
way. . . . This sympathy constitutes Christ's 
proper high-priestly action, in distinction from 
His prophetic and kingly office. It has the 
power of drawing us into the communion of 
Christ's holiness and blessedness after He, by 
His sympathy, had let Himself be drawn into 
communion with us." Here is the key to the 
atoning work of Christ. The author of Hebrews 
intimates it when he says : " For we have not 
a high-priest who cannot be touched with the 
feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points 



94 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

tempted like as we are, yet without sin." * The 
suffering sympathy of Christ is the power that 
saves the sinner. His physical sufferings have 
no efficacy except as they manifest His love. In 
and of themselves they can affect neither God 
nor man. 

Thus we see in what sense Christ is prophet, 
priest, and king. These terms are helpful ana- 
logues of His official character. They do not 
set forth the exact truth in any of these relations, 
but they stand around Him like so many mirrors, 
each reflecting something of His glory. 

CONCLUSION. 

This, then, is the conclusion of this little study 
of Jesus the Christ : that He is both the " Son of 
God " and " Son of man ; " that He is at one with 
both God and man in nature, and at one with 
God in character, and so the absolute Word, the 
" express image " of God, the Divine Life real- 
ized among men, and hence a perfect revelation 
of God's thought concerning man. What God 
is, and what He would have man do and be, and 
what He has purposed man shall do and be, 

1 Hebrews iv. 15. 



JESUS THE CHRIST. 95 

are all made known in Christ. He is the abso- 
lute Divinity, not in personality or infinity, but 
in moral likeness, and so the absolute duty 
and the absolute destiny, and, by virtue of this 
fact, the royal light and redeeming love, of the 
world. 

Consequently His is the absolute religion. 
There is no going beyond Him, and there is no 
" climbing up some other way." All other relig- 
ions are tentative; His is the absolute truth, 
way, life. We come to our destiny only through 
a moral likeness to Him. Not by " the light of 
Nature" or of "conscience" do we reach the 
goal, but by the light that shines evermore in 
the face of Jesus Christ. In some world His 
light and His love must enlighten our minds 
and purify our hearts before we can realize that 
Divine manhood which God has determined 
shall be ours. We must " conform to His 
image" before we can realize our destiny. 

It becomes us then to begin that conformation 
now. As intelligent beings, living in the midst 
of this Christian day, it becomes us to take 
Christ as our Way, our Truth, and our Life. 
Some day we must do this, and now is the best 
time. " Now is the accepted time," and always 



96 JESUS THE CHRIST. 

will be now until we do the will of God in 
" conforming to the image of His Son." As 
individuals this is our duty. As individuals it 
is supreme wisdom and supreme goodness to 
take Christ as our present, personal Saviour. 

As a Church this is equally true. We can 
really live only by building our Church on Christ. 
" The Church of the future," no less than that of 
the past, must be built on the Rock. If it is to 
be a power in bringing men into oneness w T ith 
God, it must bring them into oneness with Christ, 
root them into the great reality of His conscious- 
ness, and bind them to His personality. If this 
brief and imperfect development of the doctrine 
of Christ shall lead any one to see and feel Him 
to be his own personal Saviour, and if it shall 
help make the Church in any degree more truly 
Christian, the author will rejoice in the fruit of 
his labor. 



University Press : John Wilson & Son, Cambridge. 



<f\ m\gn**"* 



